HDDs On The Ropes, Samsung Predicts SSD Price Collisions As NVMe Takes Over

[meenmeen1103]

3 minutes ago, ChineseChef said:

You do bring up a good point, about other devices using SATA.  Likely SATA connections will simply greatly decrease quantity on motherboards once everyone goes PCIe only.

I figure 1-2 min SATA ports on most mobos for a couple of upcoming years, with 2-4 m.2 coming very soon

[TheSaint]

As an owner of a Samsung 950 Pro that is m.2, I can certainly say that this bad boy smokes my Windows 10 bootup times and any applications I through at it. Although pricey, it has been worth it in terms of time savings. Still, the price per GB isn't there yet, which is why for my archival storage I'm looking into building a Synology or other NAS system for backing up all my files, which is far cheaper than to outfit with just SSD's. Prices still need to come down before HDD's are threatened. I say this as a happy Samsung vNAND owner.

[Sakkura]

4 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

I figure 1-2 min SATA ports on most mobos for a couple of upcoming years, with 2-4 m.2 coming very soon

Yeah a few SATA ports will remain for a long time. Just look how long it took for classic PCI to go away (some boards still have that ancient junk).

 

There are already boards with 2 or even 3 M.2 slots. Asrock Z170 Extreme7+ for example.

[meenmeen1103]

3 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

As an owner of a Samsung 950 Pro that is m.2, I can certainly say that this bad boy smokes my Windows 10 bootup times and any applications I through at it. Although pricey, it has been worth it in terms of time savings. Still, the price per GB isn't there yet, which is why for my archival storage I'm looking into building a Synology or other NAS system for backing up all my files, which is far cheaper than to outfit with just SSD's. Prices still need to come down before HDD's are threatened. I say this as a happy Samsung vNAND owner.

Same on all accounts. Currently have an array of old and new mismatched HDDs that I intend on replacing with a neater mass storage solution that will still use HDDs

[meenmeen1103]

3 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Yeah a few SATA ports will remain for a long time. Just look how long it took for classic PCI to go away (some boards still have that ancient junk).

 

There are already boards with 2 or even 3 M.2 slots. Asrock Z170 Extreme7+ for example.

That's technically still a minority inclusion. I meant it would be a much more common occurrence for mid range and prebuilt stuff, where it would actually bring SATA closer to death, but even then will still hang on for a while

[The Benjamins]

5 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

Same on all accounts. Currently have an array of old and new mismatched HDDs that I intend on replacing with a neater mass storage solution that will still use HDDs

I just ordered 4 8TB HDDs (raid 10) for my server. my desktop has not have any HDD in it for over 2 years. (2 512 SSD in raid 0) My servers boot drive is a 950 pro, and takes 2 min to boot. (GG server mobo post times)

[meenmeen1103]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

I just ordered 4 8TB HDDs (raid 10) for my server. my desktop has not have any HDD in it for over 2 years. (2 512 SSD in raid 0) My servers boot drive is a 950 pro, and takes 2 min to boot. (GG server mobo post times)

I'm guessing you've also had a server for at least 2 years then 

[PocketNerd]

So if M.2 NVME is the future... guess we'll no longer have more than 2-3 drives. Unless we start stacking PCI-E slots for drives?

Guess that'd be ok, less cords, but Motherboards are going to need more power.

[The Benjamins]

Just now, meenmeen1103 said:

I'm guessing you've also had a server for at least 2 years then 

no I got it this year, it is less then 6 months old. It is windows server 2012 DC and runs on a xeon D-1541

[meenmeen1103]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

no I got it this year, it is less then 6 months old. It is windows server 2012 DC and runs on a xeon D-1541

So you're saying you actually lived through a significant amount of time with only 1tb storage between 2015-2016?? Major brownie points dude

[The Benjamins]

9 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

So you're saying you actually lived through a significant amount of time with only 1tb storage between 2015-2016?? Major brownie points dude

Oh no, I have a 10Tb Seagate nas I am going to retiring in the next few days. I build the server really slowly due to money. I have a 10 320GB used HDD that I ran storage space test on.

 

Note my server had 8 3.5 spots and 4 2.5 spots (not used currently dreaming of SSD raid)

[TheSaint]

I'm curious to see how Intel/Micron's Optane technology works, at IDF, it seemed ridiculously promising. 

 

Then I just read this: https://semiaccurate.com/2016/09/12/intels-xpoint-pretty-much-broken/

 

Until we have some real-world retail drives to play around with and benchmark (and price!) it seems that we are in sort of a storage limbo of competing tech.

 

The sooner all these vendors figure it out, the sooner we'll all benefit from lower prices and faster speeds. I, for one, would be happy to do away with SATA3 connections on mobos in exchange for more lanes taken up for PCIe/m.2 drives.

[PocketNerd]

5 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

So you're saying you actually lived through a significant amount of time with only 1tb storage between 2015-2016?? Major brownie points dude

I lived with only 1.5tb of space and had done so for years. Heck I used to only have 1tb but got a 500gb drive to use for recording small videos when I experimented with recording games.

 

Though now I have an SSD for the OS, what do people use all that space for?

[meenmeen1103]

4 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Oh no, I have a 10Tb Seagate nas I am going to retiring in the next few days. I build the server really slowly due to money. I have a 10 320GB used HDD that I ran storage space test on.

Oh ok, thought you were a mutant there for a bit. That's quite an upgrade from NAS to server. 

[TheSaint]

8 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

I lived with only 1.5tb of space and had done so for years. Heck I used to only have 1tb but got a 500gb drive to use for recording small videos when I experimented with recording games.

 

Though now I have an SSD for the OS, what do people use all that space for?

Large video game installs (without uninstalling old games), HDR photos (especially if saved in RAW), high-rez video files or video editing, people that work from home on project files for clients, etc.

 

It isn't that hard to fill up 1.5 tb of storage if you have the right conditions.

[meenmeen1103]

6 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

I lived with only 1.5tb of space and had done so for years. Heck I used to only have 1tb but got a 500gb drive to use for recording small videos when I experimented with recording games.

 

Though now I have an SSD for the OS, what do people use all that space for?

Mutant!

My movies folder alone takes around 1TB. Then there's music and games.

[PocketNerd]

10 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Large video game installs (without uninstalling old games), HDR photos (especially if saved in RAW), high-rez video files or video editing, people that work from home on project files for clients, etc.

 

It isn't that hard to fill up 1.5 tb of storage if you have the right conditions.

True, I guess I just don't hold onto that much stuff. Games, video, pics, or otherwise. And I even do work from home sometimes on game-dev stuff.

[patrickjp93]

3 hours ago, It's me! said:

I can't believe they aren't working on a new SATA spec, that really makes no sense. No wonder NVMe is taking over. 

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-ssd-hdd-sata-nvme,32762.html

It would be a breaking change with no backwards compatibility. It really doesn't matter though. SAS will get cheaper because of this, and SAS is superior to SATA in every way except cost and physical port size. And now we have U.2 as well.

[RagnarokDel]

2 hours ago, meenmeen1103 said:

How does a graph comparing NVMe to SATA SSD sales determine HDD being put to rest exactly? I don't think HDD will go anywhere until flash memory price/gb gets much closer.

There's a treshhold at which point it doesnt even matter. Having more capacity and faster speeds is what is going to matter. HDDs size seem to have hit a wall and the speeds are not able to compete with the most basic SSDs anymore.

[TheSaint]

The enterprise tech will always trickle down to the consumer market. Happens time and again. If they can make better SSD's, (lower power consumption and higher speeds than HDDs) then get the price down, even a little bit, I think eventually you'll see HDD's slowly phased out. Datacenter space is also at a premium, so they are certainly keeping an eye on new standards like u.2 to maximize physical space in a rack, not to mention power savings/reduced need for HVAC cooling, etc. Can't wait till they really start rolling out newer generations of this tech, and especially more affordable consumer grade gear.

[Doobeedoo]

Well, once SSDs catch to HDDs in price/GB 1:1 it will be amazing times indeed. 

 

I wonder will SATA4 be future multi connector on motherboards. Not sure how putting many PCIe/M.2 NVMe drives on mobo would work. Like 10 of them. Maybe build link connection like on place of SATA ports, though what about lanes too then.
Or prices of flash will go down to HDD level and capacity will just rise and everyone would have like SSDs with couple TBs on SATA3 

[patrickjp93]

38 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Well, once SSDs catch to HDDs in price/GB 1:1 it will be amazing times indeed. 

 

I wonder will SATA4 be future multi connector on motherboards. Not sure how putting many PCIe/M.2 NVMe drives on mobo would work. Like 10 of them. Maybe build link connection like on place of SATA ports, though what about lanes too then.
Or prices of flash will go down to HDD level and capacity will just rise and everyone would have like SSDs with couple TBs on SATA3 

SATA4 isn't coming. U.2/SAS will take over.

[Maslofski]

already bought a WD black a week ago, this stuff better be dirt cheap when my time to upgrade comes

[Deli]

5 hours ago, Sakkura said:

Yeah a few SATA ports will remain for a long time. Just look how long it took for classic PCI to go away (some boards still have that ancient junk).

 

There are already boards with 2 or even 3 M.2 slots. Asrock Z170 Extreme7+ for example.

Some Z87 boards with BIOS update will support NVMe. But anything older with only do SATA. PC upgrade cycle is getting longer. Most non-power users just are fine for machine 5, 6 years or older. SATA is plenty for them.

 

I fail to see NVMe SSD takes over in 2-3 years time, except for the higher end machine.

[Deli]

5 hours ago, TheSaint said:

As an owner of a Samsung 950 Pro that is m.2, I can certainly say that this bad boy smokes my Windows 10 bootup times and any applications I through at it. Although pricey, it has been worth it in terms of time savings. Still, the price per GB isn't there yet, which is why for my archival storage I'm looking into building a Synology or other NAS system for backing up all my files, which is far cheaper than to outfit with just SSD's. Prices still need to come down before HDD's are threatened. I say this as a happy Samsung vNAND owner.

I went from 850 Pro to 950 Pro. Really don't notice much difference in boot up time and how responsive the machine is.